One could easily classify Caltki as an Italian rip-off of The Blob—which it is, but there’s more to mine here than just that. At least from a historical perspective, it is significant as an early work by cinematographer/director Mario Bava, whose stylistic horror and cult films in the sixties and seventies (like Black Sabbath, Blood and Black Lace, and Planet of the Vampires) are highly influential the world over—apparently, the primary credited director of this, Riccardo Freda, intentionally abandoned the film before finishing it so Bava could take over and get more credit, although how much of the final product either of them directed is still up to some debate. So, what we have here is a rip-off of The Blob that is low budget, Italian, and shot by one of the masters of heightened atmospheric horror—a combination that, even if it doesn’t elevate it to the highest of highs, still leads to a fifties monster movie that goes places you wouldn’t expect a fifties monster movie to go.
One way Caltiki differentiates itself from The Blob is by replacing that movie’s straightforward plot with something convoluted and weird, mixing its Science Fiction up with ancient mythology (you know, like Chariots of the Gods?, but over a decade earlier), telling us right in the opening that it’s “Based on an Ancient Mexican Legend”, which is a complete lie (not the only lie, either, as the English version’s credited director is “Robert Hampton.”) After an opening narration with some beautiful matte paintings and well-decorated sets, we follow a team of archaeologists led by Professor John Fielding (played by the only English actor among a cast of Italians) who are investigating the ruins of a Mayan temple in Mexico—another big difference from The Blob: this is an “intelligent manly men talking about things” movie rather than an “adults pretending to be teenagers” movie. Of a two-person team scouting out the temple, one disappears and one comes back, hysterically ranting and raving about “Caltiki”, and the rest go back to the temple to investigate. They discover the other crew member’s camera, containing film of the two of them being attacked by some unseen entity, in a newly-opened room in the temple that also contains a deep pool of water and a statue of Caltiki, a (supposed) Mayan death goddess. Another scientist goes deep-diving in the water and discovers buried remains, gold, and also a gigantic blob creature with a propensity for melting flesh. Fielding is able to save his one friend after the blob grabs his arm, and then uses a conveniently located gasoline tank to blow the creature up. Despite three of his buddies being dead or dying, he returns to Mexico City with a sample of the monster, so overall a profitable trip.
Before we get to the part of the film where it becomes a series of scenes set in offices and living rooms, there are a few other scenes worth noting. Early on, we are introduced to a dramatic subplot involving Fielding’s wife Ellen, who does not want to be there, and his buddy Max (the guy whose arm gets blobbed ten or so minutes later), who is a super creep that hits on Ellen out of the blue, despite being there with his own wife, Linda. We also get a scene where the doomed, gold-obsessed member of the crew spies on the Indigenous labourers as they perform a dance ritual of apparent spiritual importance. Considering that this involves a woman ferociously writhing around and tearing off her own skirt while bongo music plays, something tells me that the reason the people making this movie had less spiritually-inclined reasons for including it. This eyebrow-raising bit of exoticism is typical of B-movies set in a “foreign” land, but the Indigenous people only really show up here and then disappear before they get to become really offensive. So, uh, thanks for that?
Back in Mexico City, Fielding has the piece of the blob left on Max’s arm examined, and learns that the monster is a gigantic amoeba-like single-celled organism, and after having the sample examined by an extremely large and baffling proto-Carbon dating machine, also learns that it is over twenty million years old. Combining these discoveries with an inscription he found on the Caltiki statue in the temple, he determines that the famous disappearance of the classical Mayan civilization centuries ago was likely caused by the blob, although he still can’t figure out how it became so big and so flesh-melting in the first place. Aside from scientific prestige, his further research into the subject is also so he can try to help Max, whose burn-like injuries from the monster attack casually begin to wear on his sanity. Would you believe that the monster grows with exposure to radiation, and that a comet that increases the amount of radiation in Earth’s atmosphere which appeared at the end of the classical Mayan era is due to stroll past them again imminently? Gee, I wonder what’s going to happen to that sample that Fielding keeps in his big house with his wife and daughter.
The bombastic combination of explanations—ancient legends AND surviving prehistoric creature AND cosmic radiation, all favourite topics in fifties monster movies—is one of the unique things Caltiki offers, as if one standard creature feature beat wasn’t enough. Another unique thing on offer is surprisingly graphic violence for 1959, with the blob’s necrotizing effects rendered in queasy detail—the scene of Max having the blob removed from his arm, leaving only skeletal remains, being a particular highlight. The intensity of the gore isn’t that surprising considering Bava’s subsequent filmography, but for the time, it is still genuinely shocking—and because the monster itself is nothing particularly out there (although its texture, possibly constructed from loads of tripe, and puppeted movements do give it an appropriate grossness) and those scenes are so few and far between (over the course of a lean seventy-some minutes, mind you), you don’t even get a chance to become accustomed to them. Both of these things, I think, speak to the movie’s Italian origins, whose history of B-movies demonstrates a more permissive attitude when it comes to loose storytelling logic and explicitness.
With the titular creature being doled out rather sparingly over the course of the film, the narrative gets quite a bit out of the Max subplot to get it to feature length, with the monster’s “poisonous” effect on him ultimately setting him on a semi-murderous rampage (he bludgeons a nurse to death, and then almost kills a child while running from the police) that ends with him killing his wife and trying to take Ellen by force. Between his sinister dub voice and disfigurements, Max almost seems to be positioned as a monster himself, one from a completely different movie—which, given his actions before Caltiki even entered the picture, isn’t so surprising, and also makes you wonder why any of the other characters are particularly concerned about his well-being (although Ellen at least tells Linda she should just abandon his cold, unfaithful ass—by the way, this movie definitely doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test.) Still, his skulking about the countryside and then in the Fieldings’ home does give Bava a chance to utilize shadows and imaginative shots in the more quotidian back half of the film, which is mostly people in labs discussing things before the blob makes a big comeback in the climax.
That climax does, however, get interrupted with some rather comical last-minute time wasting—after figuring out the situation with the comet, just as it passes overhead, one scientist rather inexplicably careens his car over a cliff, and then Fielding himself is stopped by police and taken into custody, even though he has already informed the military about the Big Blob Ballyhoo about to go down, and has to break out. Meanwhile, his wife and daughter keep somehow finding rooms to evade the growing amoeboid monstrosity stalking them, which I guess is the advantage of living in a colossal movie mansion that can apparently be bought with scientist money. Eventually, though, everyone convenes on the scene, Fielding gets his family out of their home, and the monster is rather unceremoniously torched by flamethrowers and tanks (is its weakness to fire meant to invert the Blob’s defeat with freezing temperature? In any case, this is a much blunter solution.) As a conclusion, it’s nothing particularly special, but really, a movie like this is not about the destination, but about the prehistoric flesh-melting blobs we meet along the way.
I’d rank Caltiki more as a historical curiosity than an essential view (especially if you want to see Bava’s early work), although it is a relatively breezy one and has some visual flair. In between the standard cliches of the genre, you’ll find some interesting and odd creative touches that stand out even more because they share space with those cliches. It’s trying so hard to look exactly like an American low budget Sci-Fi that when its underlying Italian-ness creeps up, you really notice. Which, of course, is the exact sort of thing that make these cheap old B-movies enjoyable—you see many of them that even something as simple as melting flesh and gorgeously designed ancient temples grabs your attention immediately. It’s a story that’s been told before, but at least it’s one that’s been filtered through a slightly off-kilter lens.
REVIEW ALL MONSTERS 